It's easier to write with a noisy brain

I've noticed that a lot of people like to tell me I look stressed or that something is up. I'm good at brushing it off now, because it's a lot easier to raise a bemused eyebrow or laugh it off instead of looking them dead in the eye and choking out everything is up all of the damn time, how did you know?

I'm not special and I don't like living with my own thoughts for too long. They work together.

Now don't get me wrong, I can spend hours, even days by myself and be totally fine. I'm no stranger to solo coffee shop dates, and I routinely (perhaps religiously) walk myself around areas of Bristol and Bath that I'm not familiar with yet, with just my inner thoughts for company. But I'm choosy, and when my brain doesn't want to shut the fuck up and walking half a marathon doesn't seem to soothe it, I endlessly dream of pressing the volume button on a little remote and forcing the damn thing to be silent.

When I first started working in bars, holiday parks, and restaurants (a true canon event that I'm both appalled by and grateful that no one intervened in), I never understood why everybody was either a. on drugs, b. drinking, or c. both. More often than not it was c, and if I can look past the traumatic (dramatic) flashbacks I now really understand why.

Ignoring the fact that customer service and hospitality wear out your skin (both literally and metaphorically) and then replace it with bitterness and leather, a beautiful concoction of substances saved the day because at the end of a 12 hour shift, your brain will not be quiet.

Drinking (always my poison of choice) got my brain to shut up when I needed it to; enough to sleep a measly few hours between a cl-open that I always wished I said no to. That's if I wasn't falling out of nightclubs at four in the morning, wondering how the hell I was going to survive another day. Good times.

Alcohol has followed me like a ghost with attachment issues ever since my teens, and it's gotten to the point where I expect to see the Caspar-looking, bastardly thing in my "first flat", graduation, and engagement photos, grinning like a mug in the background.

Like every good university student, I went nuts during uni. Is anyone surprised? I definitely wasn't. I took to freedom like a moth to a flame (maybe more like a girl in a club toilet to her ex, just to be more on theme), and between a mixture of eating disorder behaviours and biting perfectionism, alcoholism was the sweet, sweet cherry on top.

I calmed down after uni. Well, kind of. I'll never say no to a drink (I can count all the times I have on one hand), but at 23 I'm now old, leathery (damn you hospitality), and falling apart. That's just for pity of course. Or disbelief. I don't mind.

Some people are born with addictive personalities, making them genetically more predisposed to form stickier addictions, and I can say with certainty that I am one of those people (runs in the family). If my mother ever complains again, I can remind her that I stopped at vodka instead of taking the substance train all the way down into methville. It could be worse.

I manage my noisy brain better now too. Like I said, I do a lot of walking. I walked my first marathon this year, and as much as I wanted to crawl into a sweaty ball and die after six hours of walking in baking, seaside heat (had to pick the hottest day of the year, didn't I), it's one of my proudest achievements. Being active is so important to me, but my raging rocascia doesn't make running appealing, swimming involves using the washing machine too much, and I am not flexible or suicidal enough to be a pilates girly. Not yet anyway.

Walking is the perfect antidote to eight hours of consistent screen time (WFH gang unite) and a persistently noisy brain. Not for every situation, but enough.

By now, I think I've cracked the perfect formula: try walking first, and if that doesn't work, pop a Kalms or three. If that still doesn't work, a pint or a couple of negronis, maybe with a prescription of dancing (badly of course, we know this now don't we), should do the trick. And if that still doesn't work, the 11:45 Great Western Railway Service to Heroin Palace, stopping at the aforementioned methville and We're-Like-Family-Here Holiday Park departs from platform 11. If you run now (or walk briskly) you won't miss it.